Cruise Ship Season has started!

Its only been a couple of weeks or so since my last blog - but I do try to update it at the end of each month. Since I have arrived back to the Islands in mid November the cruise ship season is well and truly underway! I have put below a selection of pictures of some of the ships that have visited. Its quite strange when they do visit as the passengers all come ashore wearing the same jackets. So you have a swarm of yellow jackets or red jackets going around town, all taking photos of the same thing, then they disappear off on a tour to look at penguins or battlefields or whatever, and then back they come and go back to the ship.

Ships range in size from 150 or so passengers right up to 3-4000. It makes a huge difference to the town as you can imagine.They ask some strange questions like "where do we get the penguins from?" "Where is the shopping mall?" etc. But the locals make a lot of money from the tourists so we try to answer politely!

Below I also have put a picture I meant to post last time of a flock of gulls that were sitting on the road and all took off at the same time filling the sky with birds and getting plenty of poo on the car!

Anyway Christmas is coming- it feels strange as the evenings are light until gone 9pm and dawn breaks at around 4.30am ish (waking me up) so sleep is precious at the moment. Still plenty of sun, wind, more fishing (my trout tally is now 4) and the archery club is doing well - so all's good. More to the point the Lewis clan come to the Islands in a couple of weeks for Christmas so that's exciting!

That's all for now - take care and I'll post again next month. Love Mark.

A Few Falkland Birds...

Spring has well and truly arrived in the Falklands and Hengameh managed to squeeze in a flying visit while Jim was away on a school trip in Germany.

While Hengameh was on the Falklands we went out to one of my favourite places - Long Island and were lucky to see a pair of King Penguins. They were probably on their way somewhere else. It was a right pain trying to take a picture of them as they kept turning their back on me -so the one below is the best one I got.

The bird theme kept going as we saw some other feathered friendsas we walked along the coast.

We also went back to Gypsy Cove- one of Hengameh's and my's favourite places just ten minutes from Stanley. The Megallenic Penguins have come back for the summer and they live in burrows in the ground so you have to be careful where you tread. They have a lot of character (not as much as Rockhoppers though) and they are cute.

JR and Charlene came with us on a trip to Salvador where Nick and Anna Pitaluga live. We had a good look round and helped to put up a poly tunnel, had a lovely picnic and saw a bird of a different kind. It's a Wessex Whirlwind which was a navy search and rescue helicopter. It ditched in the sea and was recovered and placed next to the farmhouse.

On the way to Salvador JR took us to where he new there was a hawk's nest. We were able to get quite close ands see the female hawk on the nest while the male hawk flew protective sorties nearby!

And just to prove hengameh was here....

The archery club is ging well with 24 members and a good turn out twice a week on Fridays and Sundays. They are a really nice bunch of people - we have a good mix of juniors, men and ladies and their improvement has been quite dramatic. We have our first competitions coming up in December and January. We are having a 'turkey shoot' using paper turkey targets before Christmas followed by a new year Portsmouth. We shoot indoors in the leisure centre but hope to move outdoors soon weather permitting.

I am writing this blog from the comfort of home in Torquay - popped over for a week for a bit of work and a bit of leave. Back to the South Atlantic on Sunday 13th November. Hopefully the famliy will come down for Christmas.

Hope all is well with you all. Love Mark